Parental Brainwashing and Baby X

So the puppy's going well enough so far. Smart doggy. Still nippy, and getting into things, but for a puppy he's pretty good. [Granted, not everyone's cooperating as well as they could, but all in good time.]

That said, something else I have to mention, since it's now on my mind.
On another site, a decent friend of mine posted >this link<

It's a little lengthy, but if you can be bothered I'd strongly suggest reading it. 

Obviously I like the real message - that parents and everyone else are so brain-washed into thinking that their kids HAVE to act one way or another [decided by their gender] or there's something 'wrong' with them. And that when you stop worrying about what everyone else is thinking about, you and your kid(s) are likely to wind up a lot better off.
That said, it made me think of something else, too: Notice how in that story, the other children took a short time to get used to the new thing [in this case, X], but after they'd decided it wasn't a bad thing, they were perfectly happy and treated it just like anything else - normally. Alternatively, the parents never fully got over it, and were so stuck in their own little world where anything that was different was automatically wrong. On top of that, the biggest excuse for thinking this way that the parents had, was that it might screw up THEIR kids.
I find this absolutely ridiculous, because that's how people actually are: My sisters and I grew up on things like the 'Old' Disney and Nickelodeon. I.e. shows like Lizzie McGuire, Boy Meets World, Zoey 101 and others. There was nothing WRONG with those. Now it's nothing but sugar-coated garbage that makes kids think the world is rainbows and sunshine. They don't even air shows like Boy Meets World on kid's channels anymore. WE didn't wind up screwy - we learned to think for ourselves, not to be brainwashed by the media and anyone else.
Everyone's so afraid of everything. Parents forget that it isn't the shows that screw kids up - it's their parenting. We knew what was right and wrong, and it wasn't 'bad' tv shows or 'good' tv shows that taught us that - it was our parents.
People are so caught up with trying not to offend each other that they forget kids don't actually UNDERSTAND any of the 'bad' stuff - they learn it later, sure, but at 8 years old there aren't too many kids that are grasping any dirty innuendos in otherwise harmless shows. It flies over their heads, and parents don't understand that. [No, I'm not saying let them watch things like the Exorcist or anything horrifically dirty, but don't overreact about everything. My sisters and I were OBSESSED with the movie Grease when we were little. We didn't KNOW what the words to Grease Lightning meant - we didn't care. All we knew was that Danny was awesome, Sandy needed to lighten up, and the guys mooning the camera were goofy in the most epic way possible.]
Be a good, protective parent, yeah - but don't be the one screwing up your kid by trying to keep it sheltered from everything. There are a lot of things in the world, and flipping out over a show or not letting kids interact with people who are a little 'different' is going to leave them with a far more warped outlook on life than letting them figure things out, make mistakes, and actually understand things the way they are.

/endrant